While artificial intelligence has started to outmatch masters of the Japanese board games go and shogi, the sport of curling — known as "chess on ice" — is also turning to high technology in search of the ultimate strategical advantage.
An autonomous engineering research group from Hokkaido University gave a lecture on how AI could impact the game of curling as the sole Japanese representatives at a research forum on the use of AI in team sports held in New York in February.
The team, including 51-year-old graduate school professor Masahito Yamamoto, who has been developing the system for the past six years, had AI learn 1 million patterns of curling stone movement and scoring situations through playing games against an AI opponent.